The Pleasure Contract by Caitlin Crews (best books to read in your 20s txt) 📕

Joe Keogh thought had never been farther east than Gary or anyway New England, to have repelled the Russians. With Charley Snider he had seen bolos, Bowie knives, trench knives, stilettos, sabers, machetes, and cutlasses. They had confiscated illegal switchblades, that no claim of being a bona fide collector could save. They had looked at razors and cleavers and spearheads and God knew what, had handled today every variety of pigsticker that either Joe or Charley had ever heard of, in the process coming upon a few types that were new to both of them. And they had failed to find, or at least failed to identify, what they were looking for. Of course two men, or ten men, could not have covered all the pawnshops in a single day, and there was tomorrow to look forward to. Right now the men were deep in the basement of central headquarters, rummaging with fading hope through the last few days’ take of confiscated goodies. Along with enough blades to furnish a field of grass, there were blackjacks here, zip guns, and, once more, God knew what.

   Charley was squinting doubtfully at an odd kind of homemade brass knuckle outfit. A small length of chain had been riveted onto it. Charley had been detailed to work full time with Joe today because of a report that a black man exactly fitting the description of Carados, the west coast murderer, had been seen in conversation with a bum known as Feathers in a tavern just a block off Skid Row; and Feathers was now nowhere to be found; and Joe had allowed it to be known informally that his informant might just possibly be able to provide some lead.

   “I guess,” said Charley, trying the quaint artifact on his right fist, “if you don’t get ’im with the punch you maybe take an eye out with the swinging end.”

   “I guess,” agreed Joe. With a faint groan he straightened up from the table full of treasures he had been turning over; when he got home to Kate he was going to request a backrub.

   “So now,” Charley sighed, “looks like you can tell your boy when he calls again that we came up empty trying to find this special blade he talkin’ ’bout. What exactly was this cutter supposed to tell us when we did find it?”

   During the day’s labors Joe had already managed to put off this question a couple of times. Of course it would have to be answered sooner or later, and he had been giving some thought to how. He tried now the best answer he had so far been able to come up with: “If we found it, and could describe it exactly to him—add details beyond what he already knows about it—then he thought it would help him, maybe, to put his finger on the guys we want.” Joe had to admit to himself that his best answer sounded purely terrible.

   Charley took his time considering. “Well,” he said at last, “I guess this cat has really come through for you a time or two in the past.”

   “Yeah. He has.”

   “For Carados,” said Charley, “I’ll go to a lot of trouble. I’ll even take a chance on making an utter damn fool of myself and wasting a lot of time. When’s your guy supposed to call you again?”

   “Tonight, I hope. He wasn’t sure.” Last night, when Talisman had called Joe at home, to give him the first detailed information about the sword, Joe had been able to hear the subway trains roaring in the background. And it had been midnight. Joe wouldn’t have cared to hang around a subway station at that hour, not without Charley Snider and maybe a small squad of marines.

   His caller of course had not been distracted by any personal concerns. After describing the sword he was trying to find, Talisman had told Joe of the existence of an imported castle, a European building reconstructed out on the Sauk River, that really ought to be investigated. “The man I began by looking for is there, you see, as well as the truly remarkable man of whom I spoke.”

   “The oddity.”

   “Yes. And I can sense now that there is a woman to match.” For a moment Talisman’s voice seemed to hold nothing but deep masculine appreciation.

   Joe protested. “The Sauk River’s really way out of my territory, as you know. If I call the sheriff out there, or the state police, I can’t just tell them to look for a vampire.”

   “Obviously, Joe. It is possible that a man named Carados, from New Orleans, is there also. His existence they believe in, his possible presence will greatly interest them. But say nothing yet. The time is not yet ripe. More important matters than I had dreamed are involved here.”

   “Why are you telling me now, then?”

   “Someone besides myself should know, Joseph. If I should disappear, if I should die. I am going to visit that castle presently. The duty I have assumed compels me to. But the powers of evil there are greater than I knew, and it may be that they will slay me.”

SEVEN

   When you had just been strangled to death it seemed not surprising that your next experience should be a peculiar dream. But even under the circumstances this was starting out to be a very peculiar dream indeed. One moment Simon was nonexistent in nothingness, and the next he was adrift on the Sauk in an old rowboat, very like a boat he had sometimes played in during the summers of his childhood, when his grandmother with whom he usually lived in Chicago brought him out to visit his aunt and uncle who ran the antique shop, and the assorted cousins living in Frenchman’s Bend and on some of the farms around.

   In this dream—he was almost sure it was a dream—Simon was a child again, or not much more than a